Musing Mondays - I RETURN! And Summer Reading is DONE!!

Musing Monday, September 4, 2017

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

• I’m currently reading…

• Up next I think I’ll read…

• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…

• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…

• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…

• I can’t wait to get a copy of…

• I wish I could read ___, but…

• I blogged about ____ this past week…

I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…my summer reading challenge!

I know I've mentioned a couple of times now about my summer reading challenge that I was doing with my friend Sophia. We did the BookBub Summer 2017 Reading Challenge, and as of today at about 1:30 pm I AM 100% FINISHED!! This is a big deal big for me guys, it's the first time I've ever completed a category challenge! So officially the challenge ran from June 6-August 31. We came to it late, we didn't find out about it until mid-June but we both had books that we'd read between June 6th and the day we agreed to do the challenge that counted. We originally decided we'd set a personal end date of September 21 (the last official day of Summer) because we didn't think we'd be able to manage the end of August, especially Sophia with her mum due to have a baby in mid-August. However, we got to the tail end of August and realised how close we were so we decided to try and push to finish by August 31. We didn't succeed for two reasons, my reason was that I got an eARC of The History of Bees (I asked for it mainly as a joke because of the running gag in our office about bees) which I had to read then and there because it was an ARC, LUCKILY I could make it fit a category. Unluckily it was an incredible slog to get through and took me about a week and a half...which put me about two books behind Sophia and then I struggled to catch her up. Sophia's reason was that her mum had the baby around the 20th so she was busy with baby and kid related goings on and didn't have much time for reading. Once we realised we weren't going to manage it we decided together that we'd have our end date be September 6 which would be exactly 3 months to the day from the official challenge start.

3 months. 36 categories. That's 12 books a month, now, of course, I didn't ONLY read books for that challenge during that time, so I actually ended up reading 46 books between June 6 and September 6...47 if I finish the book I started last night by Wednesday (which I probably will because I am 76% finished it right now. That works out to about 15 books a month. This is an UNHEARD pace for me. Not only did I finish a challenge for the first time ever, not only did I read more books per month than I have EVER done before. I did something that I've been trying to do since about 2007 - read 100 books in a year. I have officially DOUBLED Goodreads pledge of 52 books for the year with 105 (202%). And given the other 5 challenges I ambitiously signed up for back in January, I still have about another 40 to go, and you know what? I am damn excited about every single one of them.

This summer challenge has been incredibly fun and has really expanded my reading horizons in some ways. I'm not going to lie I have a SUPER competitive streak and Sophia and I really brought that out in each other, but we pushed each other to finish.

So which books did I read for which categories? Here take a look:

BOOKBUB SUMMER 2017 READING CHALLENGE

LEVEL 1

1. A new beach read coming out this summer - The History of Bees: A Novel by Maja Lunde [August 22, 2017] (Complete)

2. A book that has won an award this year - Love is Love edited by Marc Andreyko [2017 Eisner winner for Best Anthology] (Complete)

3. A thriller coming out this summer - Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero (Complete)

4. A book about travel or outdoor adventure - A Darkness Absolute by Kelley Armstrong (Complete)

5. A book that’s on high school summer reading lists - Crank by Ellen Hopkins [2017/18 Northwood High School's Summer Reading List] (Complete)

6. A book by an LGBT author for June’s Pride Month - The Tree of Seasons by Stephen Gately (Complete)

7. A historical fiction book coming out this summer - The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (Complete)

8. A commonly banned book - Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman [why it gets banned]  (Complete)

9. A book set in a vacation destination - Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson [set in New Orleans] (Complete)

10. A book being adapted for the big screen this summer - The Gunslinger by Stephen King (Complete)

11. A book by an author of colour - Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (Complete)

12. A deal you found on BookBub - The Vampire’s Mail Order Bride by Kristen Painter (Complete)

LEVEL 2

13. A classic you’ve been meaning to read forever - The Island of Doctor Moreau (Complete)

14. An international bestseller - Eragon by Christopher Paolini (Complete)

15. A Revolutionary War novel for July 4th - My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier (Complete)

16. A book under 300 pages - Blood Feud by Alyxandra Harvey [272 pages] (Complete)

17. A book that makes you laugh out loud - Redshirts by John Scalzi (Complete)

18. A fantasy book for J.K. Rowling’s birthday - Out for Blood by Alyxandra Harvey (Complete)

19. A coming-of-age story - The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (Complete)

20. A historical novel about women for Women’s Equality Day - Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman (Complete)

21. A dystopian novel - The Death Cure by James Dashner (Complete)

22. A book by a debut author - The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich (Complete)

23. A beach read set in the US - Storm Front by Jim Butcher (Complete)

24. A book about man’s best friend for National Dog Day - Cujo by Stephen King (Complete)

LEVEL 3

25. A bestseller from last summer - Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book 1 [includes bestselling issue Black Panther #1] by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Complete)

26. A popular book club book - Cinder by Marissa Meyer [shelved 328 times as a book club book] (Complete)

27. A book over 500 pages - Eldest by Christopher Paolini [704 pages] (Complete)

28. A book recommended by one of your favourite authors - Emma by Jane Austen [recommended by JK Rowling] (Complete)

29. A book inspired by a classic fairy tale - Hearts at Stake by Alyxandra Harvey [inspired by Snow White] (Complete)

30. A presidential favourite - From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming [favourite of JFK]  (Complete)

31. A book of poetry - Every Thing on It by Shel Silverstein (Complete)

32. A book with a shocking plot twist -  Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Piñeiro (Complete)

33. A nonfiction book - Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm (Complete)

34. A book written by an author over 40 - Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (Complete)

35. A compelling book about mental illness - Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (Complete)

36. A book in translation - Tales of a Severed Head by Rachida Madani & Marilyn Hacker [translator] (Complete)

        THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: There isn't one! 

No random question this week, but I really wanted to start doing Musing Mondays again after my inadvertent hiatus from them. As you can tell from above pretty much the only thing I did this summer aside from chatting with Angie (which is always my favourite thing) is read. I have turned on Netflix exactly 2 times since June, both times to try and watch The Godfather. And I watched 1 DVD that I'd never seen before, other than that it's been stuff I've watched or listened to a million times so that it didn't require my attention and was just on for noise/to keep the computer from falling asleep in between replies to Angie. So, uhm, yes WELCOME BACK TO MUSING MONDAYS!